


to warm and to sting and to hold on tighter

by quinnovative



Series: Lena getting Big-Sistered by Maggie and Alex [5]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, I'm putting it in my alex/maggie & lena collection even though it's in a different universe, Lena Luthor Needs a Hug, Post Season 4 Finale, Sanvers - Freeform, SuperCorp, also bc lex has a funeral and i'm not following the timeline exactly, au i guess bc sanvers, if i continue maybe stuff will happen, maybe i miss them, maybe i'm still listening to the archer on repeat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 10:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20599256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quinnovative/pseuds/quinnovative
Summary: Alex and Maggie find Lena lingering at Lex's headstone after his funeral, exhausted and distraught. As they comfort her, Lena reconciles the one thing she really needs.





	to warm and to sting and to hold on tighter

**Author's Note:**

> background info since this is a different universe than my other stories: lex has a funeral (kind of messes w the timeline but it's okay); Alex and Maggie are still together; Kara knows that Lena knows; I played with the time a little so it's been a few weeks since Kara and Lena talked. 
> 
> That should be all, hope you like it!

The soil sinks beneath her feet, water rising from the black muck and dead grass jammed against the road that snakes around the cemetery. A throng of weeds writhes out from the cracks in the edges, chipping away at the asphalt. One step off the pavement and the earth sucks her stiletto heel toward its core. On a normal day, she’d curse and sidestep the patchwork of puddles and mud but today her lips draw a thin frozen line and she’s unwavering in her path.

In the distance, the last of the funeral attendees shuffle through the wrought iron gate in Maseratis and Cadillacs, tires spinning on the slick road. The hum of engines rattles then fades away. In one of them, Lena knows Lillian sits in the backseat to her driver, on the way to a banquet arranged in Lex’s honor, surely crawling with his followers and political scum. But right now, Lena thinks her mother might be shedding a tear for the first time in as long as Lena’s known her.

Lena averts her gaze through the oversized sunglasses she’d donned on the walk to the cemetery, not wanting anyone to know she was there. But when she reaches Lex’s freshly filled grave, following the smeared footprints of those who’d attended the service, she pulls the glasses off her face, unravels her hair from its French braid, and tugs off her jacket, letting it drop to the ground.

The fabric sops up water before she even sits but she does it anyway and allows herself to follow. Knees to chest and fingers tangling in grass, she stares ahead while the rest of the cars drive away and the sun slips lower in the sky and her heartrate creeps up and the water drenches her clothes and mist rises off the dewy ground; and, when the pressure in her chest mounts, she thinks she’s going to cry but she doesn’t. Her throat just gets tighter and tighter, and the trees seem to wilt in her name and the wind howls between gravestones and spits dirt into her face.

A numbness has begun seeping in her legs when leaves crinkle behind her, draw closer and pervade her loop of thoughts.

“Lena?”

Her heart drops between her ribs as she turns around.

Alex stands tall, the muddy water splashing against her boots and sliding off, little ripples where she stops her slow steps. Her DEO uniform pressed and crisp, but her weapons are gone, and her face is soft.

Lena breathes in and out, and looks past her, at the car stalling in the background on the winding road. She squints, trying to see through the open passenger door.

“Maggie’s in there,” Alex explains.

Lena doesn’t react. Her throat still too tight, her chest still aching.

Alex shifts her weight. She and Lena look at each other for too long, the leaves above their head swish in the wind, protesting the silence.

Alex edges closer and Lena flinches back.

“What are you doing here?” She asks, her voice raw and biting.

To Lena’s surprise, Alex doesn’t sigh or pinch her features in annoyance. Her face keeps the same soft, neutral expression she’d been wearing since she arrived. She pushes her hands into her pockets.

“Maggie ended up getting assigned a detail here and the DEO was stationing some agents on the perimeter in case anything happened. To be honest, I didn’t really give a shit about whatever they thought might happen, I didn’t care until I started to think that maybe you would come, and I wanted to be here, so I’d know you had at least two people looking out for you.” Alex shrugs. “Just in case.”

Lena wants to scoff, wants to let the betrayal and anger flaming inside her take over so she doesn’t have to feel whatever comes next; so she doesn’t have to swim in the undercurrent of grief and hurt, swirling around her legs like a riptide.

“Listen,” Alex maneuvers in the grass, leans closer before deciding against it and stepping back. “I know we haven’t spoken in weeks, but we never stopped caring about you. We never will.”

“As if you did before?” Lena spits out. “You lied to me. All of you, lied to me every day, _every time_ we saw each other.”

“Lena, I—”

“You’re sorry. I know. I’ve seen all the texts and I’ve heard the damn voicemails, but you don’t know what it’s like, Alex. You’ve always had people; you’ve always had _someone. _But I haven’t.” Lena’s eyes water. “Everyone I love leaves or dies or burns me over and over and each time I think someone—I think something is different, I’m proven wrong.” Lena shakes her head and sneers at herself, pushing off the ground. She looks at her brother’s gravestone and moves to push past Alex, bottom of her clothes sopping wet. “Lex was right. I’m a fool.”

“Lena, wait,” Alex loops a hand around Lena’s wrist, touch gentle around her twisting bones and Lena’s first instinct is to pull away but she doesn’t.

For reasons she can’t wrap her head around, she lets her pulse race under Alex’s fingers instead, the rest of her body perfectly taut.

“I’m not going to make excuses for what we did. You deserve better than that and I understand if you never want to see us again.” Lena tenses at the thought. “But if you decide to go, I just want you to know that I’ve grown to see you the same way I see Kara, and despite all the shit you’ve been through, you’re better than anyone I’ve met. You’re the best of us and I-- I just want you to know that I’m proud of you, for everything, okay? I know you’re doing your best.” Alex swallows hard, a shimmer of water rising in her tear ducts. She blinks fast and looks away for a second. “You always do.”

Alex’s words strike her like a punch in the gut, the wind knocked out of her and Lex’s last words ricocheting against her skull: _“who will be left to be proud of you?”_

Lena’s heart thunders in her chest and she bites down on her lip to the taste of blood.

For a moment she stops breathing.

“And this doesn’t have to end like everything else, not if you don’t want it to. ‘cause, let me be honest, Lena, we miss you more than you could ever know and Kara—she—”

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Lena whispers, voice cracking like the thunder in the sky. A gust of dry air draws the leaves from the ground, swirls them in little whirlpools at her feet, six feet above Lex’s remains. “Not today, after… after all of this.”

She blinks and her next breath shakes and her lips wobble.

She looks back at Lex’s marble headstone and the fresh pile of dirt in the grass.

“Okay,” Alex says softly, and Lena doesn’t know why Alex’s voice makes her diaphragm flutter painfully, hopefully. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

She turns her eyes on Alex. 

Lena’s throat loosens and lets the tears flow.

She doesn’t know how she feels or what she needs or how she’s going to get over this, but she knows what she wants in this moment, and Alex must, too, because she opens her arms and Lena falls into them.

“It’s all over,” Lena weeps. “He’s gone.”

“I know,” Alex soothes and holds her tight. “I know.”

/

“Hey,” Maggie says softly when the pair finally makes their way back to the car and Lena slides into the backseat. Alex uncurls her hand from the passenger door and slips in beside Lena.

She raises her brow; something tightens in her chest—a deep ache radiating to her limbs. “You don’t have to.”

Alex shrugs and lets their knees knock against each other. “I want to.”

“Look at you,” Maggie murmurs, turning around from the driver’s seat and noticing Lena’s wet clothes and paling skin. “You must be freezing. Hold on,” she pulls off her NCPD windbreaker. “You want it?”

Lena shakes her head, drawing her hands into her lap. “No, thank you.”

“You sure?”

Lena nods, despite her shivering and sinks deeper into the back seat, gazing out the window at Lex’s grave in the distance. She can hear his voice, looping in her head, back when they were kids. When they were on each other’s team and no one else’s. And when she breathes, the scent of wood shavings and burning permeates her lungs, and she’s back in their makeshift lab at the Luthor mansion and Lex is at her side and their legs are pressed together as they squeeze onto the bench, not unlike the way Alex’s leg falls gently against hers now as Maggie switches the car into drive and pulls away from the grass.

Lex’s gravestone shrinks in the distance and Lena’s heart is wrung out in her chest.

“Lena.”

Her gaze follows the road, stuck behind them.

“Lena,” Maggie repeats.

“Lena,” Alex says, louder this time, tapping her hand lightly against Lena’s leg. Her shoulders jump but her eyes stay focused out the window.

“Do you want to come home with us tonight? Or is there something else… what could make this a little better?”

There’s only one thing in the world that could possibly make this hurt less. Lena’s fingers tighten around her coat, one by one. Droplets of water escape the tarnished fabric, seep out onto her hand, drip onto her lap.

The cemetery disappears in the distance. Air evades Lena’s lungs.

“Kara.” She whispers before she can stop herself or pretend like she regrets it.

Maggie’s eyes shoot towards Alex in the rearview mirror and Alex’s look back at her, brows raised. She schools her surprise before turning toward Lena, green eyes wait for hers.

“You want to see Kara?”

Lena swallows hard and blinks to suppress the shadow of tears reemerging.

“Yes.”

/

The air buzzes as Lena waits in Alex and Maggie’s apartment, Kara on her way and Lena changed into a set of dry clothes offered by Alex. She clings to a mug of coffee in her hand, steam rising over the rim and up against her skin and tries to pretend she doesn’t notice the glances Alex and Maggie keep tossing in her direction. Her palms tingle against the heat of the ceramic and she should probably let go to keep her hands from reddening further, but it keeps her warm even if it stings.

She tightens her grip.

A gentle knock disrupts the still silence and the doorknob turns.

The door opens in slow motion and it takes an eon for the soft creak of the hinges to reach Lena’s ears, to offset the beating of her heart pounding. The toe of Kara’s suede boot peeks through first and then the line of her jeans and the door swings further and she’s there and Lena can’t look away or breath or pull a single word through her lips.

“Hey,” Kara whispers and her eyes are already red-rimmed above the salty residue of tears, but her lips flutter, torn between a smile and frown. She lingers in the door frame.

“We’re gonna go for a walk,” Alex says, seeking out a nod of approval from Lena and Kara but neither of their eyes stray from each other. “_All right. Come_ on, let’s go.” Alex swats at Maggie from behind, slipping around Kara and into the hallway.

It charges the atmosphere: the isolation, the space between them.

All these languages, all these words that she holds in her head, and Kara can’t find any that seem right. That feel like enough for Lena.

She runs her hands, palms down, over the front of her jeans.

“I’m sorry,” her voice cracks on the syllable. “For everything I did, I never meant to hurt you, Lena, I never—”

Lena shakes her head, all her anger sits in a puddle in her stomach, dissipating to guilt she can’t place and feelings she refuses name. “Not now, please. I just—” Lena finally breaks the eye contact they’d been holding. She places the coffee cup on the table and wrings her hands together. “It’s all—everything is too much,” she admits on a breathy exhale that steals the last bit of air from the room. “And I just… I need…”

The couch creaks and she stands, takes a step closer.

Kara bites her lip, eyes still trained on Lena. Her shoes scrape the floor as she shifts her weight and the silence stretches.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Kara offers and means it, looking at Lena’s watery eyes and shaky hands and how she moves another step closer and Kara could reach her if she lifted her arm and stretched her fingers. She could have Lena in her arms, hold her in a hug, feel her hair beneath her touch, her warmth through the t-shirt draped over her shoulders, a lingering scent of perfume, feel the heart she always listens to.

It’s all so close. She has to blink hard to remind herself this is real.

“I lost my brother long before this.” Lena takes a long breath and Kara watches it rise and fall through her body, listens as Lena’s heartrate flitters and ascends. “And I feel like I’m losing myself and I can’t lose you, too, Kara.” Lena’s voice breaks and splinters Kara’s heart. “I can’t.”

She takes the last step she needs for magnetism to take over, neither knowing who makes the final move first, who extends the arm that holds the other. Kara’s half surprised that Lena doesn’t dissipate when they make contact, that Lena’s face, damp with warm tears, fits perfectly against her shoulder. Lena feels the same, _they _feel the same.

“You won’t,” Kara says, her breath fluttering Lena’s dark hair, lips near her ear. “I meant everything I’ve said, Lena. I’m with you always.” She holds Lena tighter. “And I’m really lucky to say that, so thank you.”

Lena nods, words evading her with Kara pressed against her and slowing her heart, stilling her hands, quieting her mind for the first time in weeks. She evens her breathing with a long inhale, and squeezes Kara back.

**Author's Note:**

> yes i have an exam tomorrow, yes i wrote this anyway, yes i love supercorp so so much, and yes i miss them


End file.
